


You Know and I Know

by Miss_M



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, F/M, Family, Gen, Maternal Urges, Non-Graphic Rape/Non-Con, Police, Psychological Trauma, Scars, Sibling Incest, fluff (sort of)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-21
Updated: 2013-09-21
Packaged: 2017-12-27 06:10:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/975364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_M/pseuds/Miss_M
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Seven years after their paths crossed, Detective Brienne Tarth’s gut feeling about a case brings her to the one place she swore she would never go: Jaime Lannister’s doorstep. </p><p>Sequel to Nobody Knows</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Know and I Know

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome, everyone who is coming to this fic fresh, as well as everyone who read Nobody Knows (which can be found [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/971752)) and wants a sequel! (For the latter folks, please be aware that this is more talky and somewhat more hopeful than Nobody Knows. If you really, really, really liked the angst of NK and don’t want it spoiled in all its gloomy gloriousness, you might want to skip this one. Originally I was not going to write a sequel, but I decided J/B are angsty enough without my help. So. Just so long as everyone understands this story differs from NK.) I still know nothing about real police work or custody law, John Snow. This story contains non-graphic mentions of rape – hence the M rating, because I am very aware that it is another delicate subject, and do not wish to upset anyone.
> 
> In this story, Brienne is in her mid-to-late thirties, Jaime is in his late forties, Tommen is seventeen, Myrcella is twenty-two, and Joffrey is twenty-six. 
> 
> The title refers (again) to the Chinese tale of the Four Wisdoms, and some lines were lifted from canon. I own nothing.

She has something important to tell him. She knows it is important, but she cannot seem to remember what it is, cannot seem to shape the necessary words. It did not use to be that way. He made her feel outraged, angry, aroused, not befuddled or tongue-tied. 

What _is_ it? Joffrey, yes! It is about Joffrey. But not just him. It is about someone who got hurt. And more. It is about her, and him, Jaime. It is about all of them. She opens her mouth to tell him, and roses and pearls fall from her lips, roll across the floor. He steps on one of the roses, the perfume of crushed petals thick as paint in her nostrils. 

He will think she is trying to distract him, bribe him. She covers her mouth in embarrassment and looks up to see him smirking at her, one eyebrow lifted. She tries again, and this time frogs and snakes drop from her lips, slither over her shoes, hop away, croaking disdainfully.

Brienne bites her lip so hard she tastes blood, but it is too late, he is turning away, he is leaving, leaving her alone. She opens her mouth, desperate, and as blood comes pouring out, she screams his name. Her tongue falls at her feet, bloody and muscular and wriggling as a fat slug, his name cut off in mid-syllable as she jerks awake. 

Brienne’s heart is pounding, she is sweating as though she just got off the treadmill. She squeezes her eyes shut, forces deep breaths, in through her mouth, out through her nose. A technique she learned to stop herself being sick at messy crime scenes. It works for messy nightmares as well. When her heart is beating almost normally, she takes a moment to just lie under her duvet and pretend it is still night, she need not get up yet. Get up and do what she said she would and would not do. 

Seven years earlier, she told Jaime that Joffrey was a sociopath, and she might just have to arrest him somewhere down the line. She also told Jaime that they could not keep seeing each other, not with everything she knew about him, and his sister, and their children. Today Brienne will prove herself a woman of her word as well as a liar. She throws off the duvet, runs the shower, tells herself she is ready to go to Jaime’s house, ask where Joffrey is, arrest the boy if he is there. 

_Not boy_ , she reminds herself with a glare at her mirror self, her mouth full of toothpaste. _He’ll be twenty-six now. Maybe he’ll even put up a fight._ Absently she rubs the scar on her cheek with her finger pads: it often itches in the morning. 

It is Saturday, early still. Brienne is counting on the element of surprise. She does not bring backup. She does not have a warrant. She barely has reason to be looking for Joffrey at Jaime’s, rather than in his mother’s house, except that she cannot stand the idea of facing Cersei again. The prospect of knocking on Jaime’s door is no less terrifying, but it is the kind of terror Brienne can handle. It feels like her gun in her hand and a bulletproof vest on her back, waiting for a door to be knocked down and death to maybe greet her, adrenaline pulsing through her but her breathing and hands perfectly steady. It is not the kind of fear one never overcomes, fear of the dark, a child’s conviction that there are monsters waiting under the bed with infinite, malevolent patience. 

Brienne sits in her parked car two doors down from Jaime Lannister’s house purely on a hunch. She trusted her gut when it came to the Lannister family once already, and was not wrong, so she trusts her gut again. 

For all the good it did her the first time. 

Other than the front door being painted bright red, like fresh blood, the house looks completely unremarkable. There is a path of whitewashed stones from the street to the door, the lawn is neatly mowed. No flowers, though, and the curtains are plain, functional rather than decorative. A bachelor’s house. ( _She has plain curtains, but she also keeps trying to grow pelargonium in pots, while the flowers keep succeeding in not letting her grow them before they wilt and die._ )

Brienne glances at her hands as she walks up the path, is glad to see they are as steady as the stone slabs beneath her feet. If only her bowels would stop dancing the fandango, she might actually convince herself she is ready. She rings the doorbell quickly, before she can talk herself out of it, keeps her right hand near the holster on her hip, just in case it is Joffrey who answers. 

She does not hear the scuff of bare feet until they are right behind the door, and then the door is open, and her hand drops of its own accord. She can feel her tongue and lips drying out, but she cannot seem to shut her mouth. 

The hair is the same, a mess of blond curls, as are the eyes. She is not surprised that he has grown so tall, almost as tall as Brienne, but she never would have imagined he would grow so _slim_. The only trace of the chubby boy she once carried out of a kidnappers' hideout is the merest hint of baby fat still clinging to his jaw and cheeks. He stands there, wearing jeans and a plaid shirt, his feet bare, a young man whose open-mouthed expression matches her own. 

Words drop from her mouth, wooden and dry and sounding not even remotely intelligent. “Oh my,” Brienne whispers. “Tommen.” 

“Whoa,” he returns in a voice well on the other side of breaking, deep and velvety yet so young. “Whoa! What the…?” His voice rises in pitch suddenly, a penetrating cry, and Brienne flinches from the change in volume, then her mouth falls open all over again at what he cries out. “ _Dad!_ ” 

Tommen turns to shout down the dim corridor behind him, just as a large tabby cat streaks down it and out the door, skimming Brienne’s calf, vanishing up the street in seconds. “Dad!” Tommen shrieks, boy-shrill, oblivious to his escaping pet. “Come here quick!” 

Brienne is reeling, has just enough time to consider she may have made a massive mistake, what if Joffrey _is_ here and hears the commotion and takes off, what if Cersei is here and Brienne has to explain the intrusion to the ice queen incarnate… 

“Tommen, how many times have I told you not to let that thrice-damned cat out?” a voice from inside the house does not quite shout in response to Tommen’s shrieking. A voice that goes right through Brienne, as though someone passed a red-hot filament down her spine. It is Tommen’s voice, but older and smoother, somehow managing to drawl even when it sounds completely exasperated. 

“You’ll spend all day chasing her if you have to, I’m not doing it any more. And put some shoes on before you catch your death,” Jaime continues what sounds like a well-oiled and much-used scolding as he comes down the corridor, backlit by the kitchen window. He is barely more than a silhouette yet Brienne would testify under oath that she can feel the heat coming off him on her fingertips, her lips, the tip of her nose. Suddenly she wants to sob, but then he is there, gaping at her over Tommen’s shoulder, and they are the same height, and they look so similar Brienne almost laughs instead. 

“Brienne.” Her name slips so easily off Jaime’s tongue, as though he has been saying it every day for the past seven years. Saying it over breakfast, on the phone, in bed. There is silver mixed in with the gold at his temples, even more silver in the neat beard he has grown. It makes him somehow even more devastatingly handsome than before, and Brienne cannot help her left hand rising to cover her cheek. 

Tommen spies the movement, blurts out: “Hey, what, what happened to your face?” 

Brienne is blushing, she can feel it, she is positively _radiating_ heat. She clutches her cheek and hunches her shoulders, wishing she had not come, that she had let someone else figure it out and arrest Joffrey. At least she is pretty sure he is not here, she cannot imagine anyone still left in the house would not have come to the door to see what the hullabaloo is about. 

She still has not spoken, cannot think of a coherent, let alone graceful way to excuse herself before she bolts down the path of whitewashed stones. She does not get the chance, because Jaime is gently moving Tommen out of the way and reaching out a hand, not to touch her, just to invite her in, almost to placate her. “Tommen,” he murmurs, not taking his eyes off Brienne, “we have not seen Detective Tarth in years, did your manners escape along with your cat? Please, Brienne, come in. We were just finishing breakfast, you can have some coffee with us.”

_Us_ , she thinks as her feet move of their own volition, carry her across the threshold, her arms brushing the two Lannister men as she sidles between them, follows the beaming Tommen into the kitchen. _Us. Coffee. Breakfast. Dad. What have I just walked into?_

She stands by the kitchen table, stares at the mismatched mugs, the open pot of jam, remembers that day in Cersei’s neat, stylish kitchen discussing Tommen’s disappearance. Brienne feels like she just walked into the Mad Hatter’s tea party. When Tommen pulls out a chair for her and starts taking another plate and mug down from the cupboard, she wants to giggle and say they should all just move one place on, so everyone can get a clean cup. Instead, she makes herself stop clutching her scarred cheek and sits down, stiff as a log. 

Jaime is leaning against the doorframe, studying her as Tommen slathers jam onto cold toast and pours her coffee, his words of excitement and delight at her visit tumbling out like kittens. Brienne cannot help smiling up at Tommen, even as she wonders how delighted he will be when he hears she wants to arrest his older brother on suspicion of multiple rapes. 

“Tommen,” Jaime’s quiet voice cuts right through the lad’s enthusiasm. “Detective Tarth has her official-business face on. Why don’t you go look for Old Boot and let us adults talk, hmm?” 

Tommen manages to pack a century’s worth of indignation and wounded pride into the slant of his green eyes, his pursed lips, his velvety whine. “Her _name_ is Miss Boots, and I’m seventeen! I’m old enough to hear whatever Brienne wants to talk about. Aren’t I, Brienne?” he appeals to her, his eyes gone puppy-round, his cheeks pink with sincerity. 

_An emotional weathercock, just like when he was little_ , Brienne thinks. She opens her mouth with absolutely no idea what to say, is both relieved and annoyed when Jaime responds. 

“Seventeen is underage, which makes you a child still, which means you have to do as I say. And the Boot is an old monster, there’s nothing remotely missy about her. She has had more kittens than I’ve had lap dances.” 

“Jaime!” Brienne exclaims in outrage before she can stop herself, is rewarded with one of his self-assured, heart-melting grins. 

Tommen is sputtering, whether on his own or on the cat’s behalf, or with a teenager’s mixture of mortification and arousal, Brienne cannot tell. The back and forth between father and son ( _father and son!_ ) goes on a while longer, so well-worn and familiar, so _familial_ , Brienne almost wishes it would not end, that she could just sit there all day, listening to them bicker while her coffee cools in front of her, untouched. 

It is over much too soon, Tommen grumbling about the injustice of it all while he pulls on his shoes and jacket in the corridor. Jaime watches Brienne, and she watches him back. They do not speak, waiting to hear the front door close. 

Tommen appears next to Jaime like a gangly jack-in-the-box, green eyes sparkling. “You’ll wait until I come back, won’t you?” he asks Brienne eagerly. “There’s so much I want to tell you.” 

“I…” She wants to tell him the truth, thinks better of it. Realizes that with the way Jaime is watching her she has no idea what will happen after Tommen leaves, and the certainty leaves her feeling both leaden and liquid inside. “I don’t know, Tommen,” she says. His face starts to fall. Brienne hurries on: “But I could come back, if that’s all right.” A quick glance at Jaime suggests she is not overstepping any marks. 

Tommen grins, oblivious of the tension between the two adults. “Awesome! See ya later!” And he’s off, pelting down the corridor and out the door as though he should have a stripy tail of his own. 

Silence descends in his wake. Brienne can feel her breastbone rise and fall as she breathes. When she swallows, it deafens her from within, the booming of surf in a sea cave. The rustle of Jaime’s jeans when he pushes away from the door and sits at the table across from her makes her want to bolt all over again. 

Jaime watches her like he expects her to wink out of existence, or at least out of his kitchen, if he blinks. He gestures at his perfect cheekbone: “What happened?” 

Brienne almost tells him to go fuck himself, furious at him for asking her that, that first of all, with _his_ face, how dare he. After everything. Her shrug is so exaggerated, she is certain she could move thousand-year-old trees with her shoulders. 

“Got grazed by a bullet a few years back. At least it didn’t ruin my looks.” She says this with perfect equanimity. She used to suffer because of her ugliness, when she was six, sixteen, twenty-six. But all false bravado, all anger, all self-deprecating humor about her looks got leeched out of her long before the day she felt her whole face burning with the bullet’s passage. When the doctor stripped the bandage off the red, jagged-looking scar scored into her flesh, and told her she was lucky the bullet had not gone two inches to the right or it would have taken half her head with it, she believed him. 

Lucky. Yes, she was lucky. 

She still resents the doctor calling it a graze, when it looks more like the Grand Canyon seen from space. 

Jaime does her the courtesy of not saying she looks fine, the very picture of health. It is more than most people manage. Nor does he look away, as though her face were a burden on _him_. But then, he has already seen her angry, seen her worried and focused and on the verge of tears, seen her come. Not many surprises left there. 

She should ask him about Joffrey’s whereabouts, but she finds the question will not come without trailing a whole host of other questions, questions she is not certain she wants answered ( _yes she does_ ) or that she has any right to ask. During their one night together, seven years earlier, she held Jaime while he cried and swore to herself she would never seek him out, no matter how much she wanted to. And there were days ( _nights_ ), bad ones after worse days at work, when she wanted to desperately. Now that she is finally here, in his home, in his kitchen, the place where she can imagine him sitting late at night, drinking scotch out of a coffee mug as she once saw his sister do, thinking his own dark thoughts, she finds that no words will come to her. 

“Why are you here, Brienne?” he asks quietly, his thumb scratching at an old stain on the table. “Not that it’s not nice to see you, but why now?” 

_Open Sesame_ , Brienne thinks ruefully, as she takes a deep breath and tells him. About the spate of rapes in the area where Stag Enterprises are headquartered. About the evidence collected from the victims, and what the DNA profile revealed. About the lack of a match in the known sex offenders database, and the statistical unlikelihood of there being many serial rapists whose parents are brother and sister. About Brienne’s terrible, plausible hunch, her desperate, fragile hope she might catch Joffrey before he attacks again, and still somehow keep the whole truth a secret. So she does not implicate Tommen and Jaime and Myrcella. And Cersei. She promised Jaime as much seven years ago. 

While she finishes the bare outline of her gruesome story, Brienne realizes what it must sound like to Jaime. His son, whom they both knew was a ticking time bomb. His son, who owns one third of Stag Enterprises. Joffrey, with his cold eyes, and his twisted curl of a smile, and his absolute certainty that nobody else in the world matters as much as he. His parents’ arrogance apotheosized. 

Jaime is staring at the table, scratching intently at that stain. “He rapes young women, and leaves his seed and saliva on them,” he says dryly. “Sounds stupid and conceited enough to be Joffrey.” He looks up at Brienne, and she wants to get up, go around the table and embrace him when she sees his eyes. _You stupid, stupid man. How could you do this? How could you let your sister bear you children and assume it would all somehow be all right?_

“But it isn’t him.” 

Brienne gasps, her heart pounding as it did when she woke from her nightmare. She remembers the last ( _latest_ ) victim, her face swollen with bruises, her lip split, her red hair the only part of her former beauty left untouched. Alayne Stone was arguing with her doctor about how soon she could have a termination when Brienne came to take her statement, her young voice coiled with anger at everything she could not control, at the world which had let her drop off its edge. Her wounds will heal but her mirror will be an enemy. She will never be beautiful again, Brienne knows, is ashamed all over again to remember an absurd moment of relief at her own ugliness, as though looking a certain way ever protected anyone. She knows. One or two men tried to teach her that lesson over the years. One or two _tried_. 

“What do you mean?” she demands. Jaime stops scratching at the table, sits back in his chair, runs a hand through his hair, looking his age for the first time since Brienne got there. 

“Joffrey has been out of the country for over a year,” he says. “Didn’t even come back for Christmas. His uncle Stannis thought it would do him good to get some experience running their overseas production line.” Brienne shakes her head, what is he saying? “Malaysia,” Jaime says, offers her a half smile, half shrug, as if to say _who knows what Joffrey is getting away with there_. 

Brienne tries to think quickly, but her brain feels like porridge, sludgy and uselessly slow. Two men, more than likely employed in the same general area, with similar power fantasies, and a similar genetic background. It is a professional habit in police officers not to believe in coincidences. Yet Brienne is certain, certain in her gut and her heart and her poor, slow brain, that Jaime is telling her the truth. She has not seen any affection between him and Joffrey, and cannot imagine even guilt would compel Jaime to protect the lad. He would lie for Tommen or Myrcella, who would never need him to, but not for Joffrey. 

“What is all this?” she asks, more sharply than she intended, her thoughts spilling over into her tone, the hand she waves at the sunlit kitchen, the remains of breakfast on the table between them. “Tommen is living with you now?” 

Jaime stares at her, nods slowly. She waits. He grins, shakes his head. “You really don’t know?” 

Brienne favors him with a scowl. 

“I guess I thought you’d kept tabs on us over the years,” he muses. “Your way of missing us.” 

Brienne’s scowl does not waver. 

Jaime sighs, tells her. How he told the children the truth about their parentage two years after Tommen’s kidnapping, and the fallout from that, his latest impulsive act. ( _He waited until Tommen was older, until Myrcella was almost done with school and Joffrey with university. Or was that simple fear? When did he decide to do it: six months, six years, sixteen years earlier? In the moment, as the words fell from his lips?_ ) 

He tells her how Cersei got married within six months and moved to Brazil with her new husband. Some oaf called Kettleblack, of all things. Brienne winces inwardly at the jealousy in Jaime’s voice, tells herself that will always be there, she is a fool if she thinks otherwise. Cersei’s face shivers up before her mind’s eye, beautiful and never-aging, and Brienne knows that in their jealousies, if in nothing else, she and Jaime are birds of a feather, two halves of a whole. 

Jaime tells her how Myrcella would not speak in anything less than a shriek for months, threw things, moved far away for college, barely speaks to Jaime even now, five years later. 

How Tommen did not come out of his room for days on end, went through a full-blown agoraphobic episode, still sometimes has nightmares about men grabbing him off the street, keeping him in a dark room and threatening to cut bits off if he doesn’t keep quiet. 

How Joffrey flatly refused to accept the truth, started insisting on everyone calling him Mr. Baratheon at work, and went into a rage if anyone pointed out the physical similarity between him and Jaime. 

How Jaime took in Tommen, then barely thirteen, after Cersei moved away. Jaime, who had missed out on all the children’s toddler tantrums, night terrors, measles and flus, made up for it by being there when Tommen would not leave his room, would not speak, just sat and stared at a wall with his cat on his lap. The same cat Jaime still tolerates because the damned thing having kittens was the first thing that made Tommen stir from his lethargy, made him smile. 

How Jaime sold his share of Lannister Inc. to Margaery Tyrell, so he would have more time for Tommen. Spiting Cersei, even from a distance, was the gravy, and for once Jaime was grateful their father's will had made him the majority shareholder in the company. 

How Cersei only got in touch once, just after the sale, to threaten Jaime with a lawsuit if he ever tried to assert his paternity legally. Brienne has to laugh at that. Of all the ridiculous notions, and after the way she and Jaime had lived. When he was content to let the children go on being called Baratheon and going through life as easily as they could with the knowledge he had given them, the gift of truth, the curse of knowing. 

How Tommen called him _dad_ for the first time about a year earlier, blushed and choked when he realized what he had said. Did not come out of his room for two days, but kept calling Jaime that ever since when they are alone, almost stubbornly. Almost proudly. Jaime does not say as much, but Brienne can see it. 

“You did well by him,” she says, thinking that Tommen called him that even though she was there. “By them. As well as you could.” 

“Yeah, sure,” Jaime mutters. “Damned if I did, damned if I didn’t.” 

Brienne reaches across the table, squeezes his hand, hers bigger, freckled, stiff with shock at her own boldness. He rubs the back of her hand with his thumb, and she wants to overturn the whole table, crockery, jam pot and all, and make her escape. 

“You really didn’t know?” he asks, his eyes fixed firmly on their hands. 

“I made myself not look you up,” Brienne admits. “Any of you.” Her ability to breathe, to keep so still astonishes her. “If I had… I’d have been here the second I learned Cersei moved to Brazil.” As she says it, she knows it is true. Seven years ago, there was no way for them. But then he changed things. Jaime did that. For himself, not to prove something to her. _He_ did that. 

His eyes take a moon’s turn to move from their clasped hands to her face, so Brienne has enough time to gather herself together, pull her hand free, stand and move to the door. Even as she feels her hand twitch to touch him again, her breasts and hips reach for him. Jaime is faster, overturns his chair in haste, clips his hip on the table, manages to catch her just inside the kitchen door, pin her to the wall with his arms on either side of her. Brienne keeps her fists by her sides. She knows and he knows that she could easily push him away, hurt him. 

“Let me go, Jaime,” she says in her best _you can come quietly or you can come in handcuffs_ voice. 

“I let you walk out of here now, you’ll never come back,” he replies, his voice thick in a way it has no right to be, not when Brienne is barely keeping her breathing steady as it is. He is watching her eyes, her lips, her neck, the scar on her cheek. She keeps her eyes fixed to a point just by his left ear. “Come upstairs with me,” he whispers, his own breathing a bit unsteady. 

Why is he doing this, when he is the one who turned his life around, while she did nothing for the past seven years save work, and go home alone, and dream of him? 

She makes herself look at him, so close, her face a mask of stone, a sneer of steel. “You’ve already seen all there is to see, save a few new scars. I have to go. I have a rapist who is not your son to catch.” 

The last time she spoke to him like this, they nearly came to blows ( _or fucked_ ) in a courthouse parking lot. This time, though pain and anger tighten Jaime’s mouth and eyes for a second, his hands leave the wall, slide gently around Brienne’s waist. His mouth does not quite touch her throat, his voice shivering with barely contained emotion. “You promised Tommen you’d come back and catch up,” he murmurs against her skin. “You keep your promises, don’t you?” 

_You fucked your sister for nearly thirty years and now you think I’m going to fall into your waiting hands just because you… you… you overturned your whole miserable life and took responsibility for the first time ever? And didn’t come looking for me, to show me what a good boy you’d been? You arrogant son of a bitch_ , Brienne thinks as he nuzzles her neck, the scratch of beard, just a hint of lips, letting her make up her mind in her own sweet time. 

“I said I wasn’t going to see you any more, and I broke that promise,” Brienne says, daring to touch his waist with her knuckles, her hands still squeezed painfully into fists. “But Tommen is a different matter entirely.” 

Jaime allows himself a chuckle and a quick kiss to her throat, savors the Richter scale 5 shiver which runs through Brienne, before he steps back and lets her leave. 

She does come back, notices that there are no family photographs in Jaime’s house ( _one day she will spot the one of little Tommen with Robert Baratheon on the fishing boat in the lad’s room_ ). She and Tommen sit on the couch with snacks and sodas, and talk and talk and talk. Brienne laughs at Tommen’s stories from school and soccer practice, notices Jaime watching from the doorway, feels bold enough to throw a cheese puff at him for eavesdropping. It falls far short of the mark, and he sticks his tongue out at her. Tommen covers his face with a cushion and orders them to get a room. Brienne later discovers that muffling her grunts of pleasure in Jaime’s shoulder, in his bed, can feel as good as keening her release to a hotel-room ceiling. Better. 

Over breakfast, Jaime makes them both blush with his jokes, and Tommen and Brienne display a natural ability to synchronize throwing toast crusts, though they do not always hit him. The cat sniffs at the crusts and stalks off disdainfully, while Jaime berates it for a useless animal that doesn’t even clean up good food humans drop ( _the cheese puff got trampled into the carpet, not that he actually cares_ ). Brienne goes to work thinking she has to bring some clean clothes to Jaime’s, her colleagues have sonar-like abilities to spot someone wearing the same clothes two days running. She feels somewhat guilty for not focusing her every waking moment on clearing her caseload ( _dead babies_ ), but she deals with it. 

When she asks Jaime about Robert Baratheon’s death, one evening while they sit on the couch, in the dark, just sit, touching each other’s hands and faces and reveling in having all this _time_ , and she cannot restrain her morbid curiosity ( _her cop instincts_ ), Jaime confesses he never dared ask his sister that very question, and Brienne wonders at how easy that answer is to accept and to live with. 

When she asks Tommen what it’s like living with his father, one weekend afternoon while they watch a sports program with Miss Boots sprawled on the couch between them, Tommen shrugs and smiles and looks sad all at once, and Brienne marvels at how easy it is to reach over and give him a quick one-armed hug, making the cat yowl when its tail gets caught under Brienne’s thigh. 

Sometimes, waking up to hear Jaime move around in the shower or watching Tommen chew his pencil while he struggles with math homework of an evening, Brienne feels guilt and terror at inserting herself into the remains of this fractured, damaged, melted and reforged family. Has to remind herself she is not stealing anything that was not freely given by Jaime and Tommen or found abandoned by Cersei ( _Brienne’s personal haunt, her golden shadow_ ). Brienne talks to Myrcella on the phone every few days, and thinks that none of them will ever be all right, but maybe they will be fine. 

Alayne Stone proves not to be the last victim, and it is through pure chance and his arrogance alone that Brienne catches the rapist. One of his first victims recognizes him going into his office one day, has the presence of mind to call Brienne, who ends up having to climb out of a third-story window, chase the man down a fire escape and into the street, and go into a rugby slide down concrete to knock his feet out from under him. When she staggers up, her slacks and the skin of her left leg all torn up, and cuffs him, she realizes the building in front of which she stopped him is Stag Enterprises. She has only a moment to reflect how much she hates coincidences before her leg starts screaming, as does the man. She puts her weight on her other leg, and deals the suspect a hard slap to make him shut up, as is his legal right. 

She is in no condition to do more that evening than lie on the couch, mellow on painkillers, her torn-up leg swaddled in bandages and resting on a row of cushions, Jaime’s head leaning on her torso as he sits on the floor and channel surfs. Tommen is out with friends, which would normally mean naked time in the house, but Brienne cannot manage it just then and Jaime is wise enough not to ask. 

She runs her fingers through his hair while he keeps up a running commentary on the idiocy of television, and thinks how different it is to have sex with Jaime when she has to keep her voice down, lest Tommen hear them. Despite Jaime’s assurances the lad is grown up, or near as, and knows what they are up to anyway. How she finds the leisureliness as well as the urgency of it both more excruciating and sweeter than their one fevered night in a hotel room seven years earlier. How she still sometimes kisses Jaime thinking it might be the last time ( _in this life, especially in her line of work, it might be_ ), and tells herself that the moment of disconnect she experiences when he groans her name, and her synapses fire wrong and for a moment she is certain he called her Cersei, will cease to happen, given enough time. That there will come a day when she will be absolutely certain Jaime called her by her name and meant it. She looks forward to that day. 

Brienne snatches the remote out of Jaime’s wildly gesticulating hand, turns the TV off. “There’s something important I have to tell you,” she says, holding the remote out of his reach. “A couple of things, actually.” 

He sits up, grins, not quite managing to hide the flash of terror in his eyes. “I knew those painkillers would do the trick. Come on then, you insatiable creature, get those sweatpants off.” 

She catches his hands before they can get to her waistband, holds them, holds his eyes with hers. “I want children, Jaime.” He gives her his most salacious grin, but she keeps talking. “With you. Tommen is lovely, but I want children with you. At least one. Maybe two. And I’m getting older, we both are. So I need to know right now if you’re up for it. No bullshit.” 

Jaime’s hands are motionless in hers. When he speaks, his voice is gratifyingly fond and free of jest. “If this is your way of asking me to put a diamond ring on your finger, you can just ask for a diamond ring. Or would you prefer to live in sin with this old reprobate first, see how it works out?” 

Brienne thinks this over. “I don’t mind conceiving a baby while living in sin.” 

“Me either.” 

“Don’t you want to think about it?” 

He does smile then, and she wonders if it ever occurred to him to miss being a father until Tommen came to live with him, already an adolescent, already his own person. “What is there to think about? We do the squelchy, nature takes care of the rest.” 

Brienne makes a face. “You sound like Tommen. ‘Squelchy’! I ask you.” She bites her lip. “What if we have two and they are twins?” 

“What if a piano drops out of the sky and kills me tomorrow?” He kisses her mouth, her scarred cheek, her eye. “The answer to your question is, we install CCTV cameras in their rooms and monitor their every living breath.” 

Brienne tries to swallow the laugh that bubbles up her throat. It comes out of her nose as a snort. “Deal. And once they are born, I would not mind if their contact with Cersei and Joffrey were limited to the occasional birthday card.” 

“No complaints there. Though I wouldn’t hold out hope even for birthday cards, not unless they make those with smoke bombs now. Or anthrax.” 

Brienne tamps down the urge to tell him how proud she is of him, knows there is no way to make it not sound condescending. She has not yet decided if she wants their child ( _children_ ) to know Myrcella and Tommen are not just cousins, suspects this is something she and Jaime will have to discuss _with_ Myrcella and Tommen. It is not just about Brienne’s understanding of right and wrong any more. 

“The other thing is, sometimes I won’t want you around,” she continues. “I’ll just want to sit in the dark, and cry, and have you leave me alone. Is that all right?” 

He cocks his head as he considers her, sprawled on the couch. “Because of dead babies?” 

“Dead babies. Pregnant rape victims. Take your pick.” 

Jaime winces. “Yes, it’s all right. But if you don’t want me around because of something I did, you have to suck it up and tell me, OK?” She nods. He hesitates for a second, plunges on: “And you can’t win arguments by pulling the incest card on me.” 

She tries to sit up, gets stuck halfway between sitting and lying down while her leg screams at her to ease up. “I would never!” 

Jaime catches her under the armpits, lays her back down. Hovers over her like she is a princess woken with a kiss, smiles gently. “I know. But I imagine there will be times when you’ll be tempted. I’ve been told I can be a bit trying.” 

Brienne does not dignify that with a response, other than an eye-roll. “One more thing.” He composes his face into an expression of long-suffering patience. “We should invite Myrcella to visit next summer. You two have to learn to be civil to each other, at least.” 

Jaime mulls this over, his face allowing Brienne glimpses of what the seven years after Tommen’s kidnapping must have been like for him. Finally he nods, once, curtly. Brienne ruffles his hair affectionately. 

“You want to invite that boyfriend of hers as well, don’t you?” he grouses, leaning into her touch. 

“What’s wrong with him? 

“Nothing.” He does not say, _other than the fact that he is dating my daughter born of incest, who he and the world think is my niece_. “He’s Dornish, that’s all.” 

“Jaime Lannister, I never thought you, of all people, would have such prejudices.” 

“I’m not prejudiced. It’s just Dornish food. It’s all spices and honey and year-old fish and things cooked to the point of liquescence, how anyone can live on that and stay normal, I do not know.” 

“Uh huh. Keep talking, Jaime, maybe you’ll run out of uncomplimentary things to say by the time they visit.” 

“Not a chance. I can always think of more uncomplimentary things to say.” 

“I’m sure the Dornish Anti-Defamation League would be very interested to hear your views.” _When did trying to keep up with his banter become as comfortable as this couch, as his bed?_

“Listen, Brienne, just because they teach you police _men_ to be open-minded and politically correct these days, that does not detract one jot from the fact that there’s something rotten in the state of Dorne.” 

“That something being their food?” 

He nods sagely. “You know it and I know it.” 

_And the earth knows, and the sky knows_ , Brienne thinks, sees on his face he is remembering that as well. She is glad she can think of that night, that whole period, and the seven years that came after, without wanting to lock herself in the toilets at work or escape home and weep, and sometimes touch herself, and weep some more. She lies on the couch with Jaime’s head on her knee, his fingers teasing up her thigh toward her waistband, and breathes deeply. Weighed down, buoyed up by the sense of something beginning, something which cannot end. 

**Author's Note:**

> So, Dorne exists in the same universe as Brazil, Malaysia and whichever English-speaking country the house with the red door is in. I place Dorne roughly where Gibraltar is in our world, but bigger. Tommen’s choice of euphemism for sex is because Tommen is a huge fan of Jeff on “Coupling.” I made (Miss) Boots a tabby because I like the image of the Lion of Lannister v. the Little Tiger. Brienne’s dream owes everything to AFFC and to Charles Perrault’s fairytale “Diamonds and Toads.” As for that incredibly lame _Hamlet_ reference at the end there, I’ve been itching to slip one into fic ever since I discovered NCW played Hamlet in theater in Denmark way back when, which is both incredibly hot and very meta.


End file.
